PD leader prevailed in Upper House with 169 votes in favour

(ANSA) - Rome, February 25 - Premier Matteo Renzi's
government faces the second of two parliamentary confidence
votes in the Lower House on Tuesday after the new executive was
sworn in at the weekend.

The leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) saw
his administration win the backing of the Senate early on
Tuesday, with 169 votes in favour and 139 against.
"OK in the Senate, now the House," Renzi, Italy's youngest
premier at 39, posted on his Twitter account, @matteorenzi.

"Then we'll start working seriously".
The premier was sitting on the governments benches when
the House debate started at around 10:00 ahead of the second
confidence vote.

The PD has a majority in the House, unlike the Senate,
where Renzi needed the support of coalition partners to pass the
confidence test as his party did not obtain full control of the
Upper House at last year's inconclusive general election.
Renzi leads a team of 16 ministers, eight of them women,
with an average age of 47, also the youngest ever.
He took power after torpedoing the coalition executive of
his predecessor and PD colleague Enrico Letta.
He accused Letta of moving too slowly on promised reforms
to streamline government and jump start the economy, which is
slowly emerging from its longest postwar recession, in order to
cut record unemployment and help increasing numbers of 'new
poor'.
Renzi will now have the arduous job of delivering those
reforms while working with the same fractious alliance Letta
had.
He is Italy's third straight unelected premier.
Deals between parties led to the creation of Letta's
administration last year and the emergency technocrat government
of Mario Monti in 2011.